Fictional characters going undercover need snazzy aliases so that they aren't recognized. Can't think of what to call yourself, and the scenery isn't providing any helpful hints? Just use the name of a character from fiction, or the name of a real famous person! No one will ever know who you really are.

If a character makes a habit out of doing this, it may be a case of Themed Aliases.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

In The Five Star Stories by Mamour Nagano, the main character uses the alias Ladios Sopp. In Heavy Metal L-Gaim, which Nagano worked on, the main villain is Oldna Poseidal. Ladios Sopp backwards is (P)possoidal.

In Death Note, the master detective on the trail of a supernatural serial killer introduces himself to the suspect with the name of an internationally famous pop star. This is part of the detective's Batman Gambit as the killer needs only the name and face of a victim to kill; but, if the killer accidentally thinks of the pop star instead, the celebrity's widely reported death would confirm his guilt.

In Detective Conan (Case Closed in the English dub), Shin'ichi Kudo is changed into a little boy by a powerful poison. When he returns to his house after the change, he is surprised by his girlfriend Ran Mouri and hastily thinks up the name of Conan, from the famous author of Sherlock Holmes. His fake last name of Edogawa comes from Edogawa Ranpo, a Japanese mystery author, whose pen name in turn is a pun on Edgar Allan Poe (Edogaa Aran Po).

Comic Books

The Martian Manhunter, shapeshifted into an (apparently) Japanese woman, as "Hino Rei". Seriously. What's more: Batman picked up on the reference. Out-of-universe, this is supposedly due to someone pranking the author when he asked for a name connected with Mars.

Spyboy's partner Bombshell attended his sleeper personality's high school under the name "Marta Hari."

When Young Justice infiltrated said high school, they used even more obvious aliases, including Rob Roy (Robin) and Helena Troy (Wonder Girl). Mercifully the charade didn't last long.

Fan Work

Sonichu1984 has the anonymous main character make up the alias "Winston" when meeting another character, who uses the alias "Orwell".

This trope was also part of a major trolling scheme against the "original" Sonichu author, who was successfully convinced that his comic was being plagiarized by an Englishman named Jimmy Hill, who is actually a football commentator.

The Wanderer of the North: Nikóleva goes by the name 'Wintermail' during her self-imposed exile so that no one will suspect her as an Alicorn.

Film

In American Psycho Patrick Bateman gets out of conversations with the detective by claiming to have a meeting with various characters from 80s sit coms.

In Catch Me If You Can, Frank Abagnale Jr. uses the alias Barry Allen, secret identity of The Flash. One of the guys on the case figures out that the person they're looking for is probably quite young based on this information.

In the second Fletch film, Fletch Lives, Fletch uses the alias "Elmer FuddGantry", combining the names of two fictional characters.

In The Saint with Val Kilmer, all of Simon's aliases are names of Catholic saints.

Real-person name example from In the Line of Fire: Would-be presidential assassin Mitch Leary uses the name Booth (as in John Wilkes -) when taunting Agent Frank Horrigan (a former JFK bodyguard) over the phone.

Leary: Why not call me Booth?

Horrigan: Why not Oswald?

Leary: Because Booth had flair, panache - a leap to the stage after he shot Lincoln.

In The Birdcage, the flamboyantly gay housekeeper is pretending to be a stereotypical butler and introduces himself as Spartacus.

The otherwise forgettable made-for-TV Generation X movie had Emma Frost pass off herself and Banshee off as Hootie and the Blowfish without the police officer batting an eyelash. Luckily, Emma has also messed with the guard's mindsight.

In the first Die Hard: John McClane decides that the name he'll use with Powell will be "Roy" after Roy Rogers (which McClane referred to in a previous scene — the one with his Catch Phrase). It can also be considered a real person name example, although Rogers was not the actor's birth name.

In Shock Treatment, it turns out that Cosmo and Nation McKinley are not real doctors, but character actors who use an assortment of last names — all those of U.S. presidents.

In The Player, the blackmailer uses the alias 'Joe Gillis' (the narrator from Sunset Boulevard) but this is intentional because he knows the connotations will rattle his target.

In Shakespeare in Love, Lord Wessex brings a knife to William Shakespeare's throat and threatens him to stay away from his future wife Viola de Lesseps. Wessex demands to know Shakespeare's name to deter any future meddling. Will uses the name "Christopher Marlowe", the name of his chief competitor. In real life, Marlowe was murdered in mysterious circumstances.

In Notting Hill Julia Roberts' character (a famous actress) uses fake aliases taken from cartoon characters to check into hotels.

In Copycat, Peter Foley uses the names of serial killers as his aliases.

In Time After Time, H.G. Wells comes to the present [1979] and tries to use the name "Sherlock Holmes", mistakenly thinking that the fictional character would be forgotten in the future. Fortunately, due to not many people knowing what "H.G." stands for, he's nicely able to fit in just by using his real name, Herbert Wells.

In novel "The Unknown", Marco, Rachel and Cassie are captured in a military base. They give their names as Fox Mulder, Dana Scully and Cindy Crawford, respectively.

In the very last book, they identify themselves to a rogue Yeerk ship as the Starship Enterprise, from the United Federation of Planets. This turns out to be a bad idea, as a human-Controller responds, asking sarcastically to speak to Captain Picard.

Roger Zelazny wrote a series of novellas, collected in My Name Is Legion, about a secret agent whose real name even his employer didn't know, whose aliases were always the names of obscure-but-notable historical figures. (In a break from the usual procedure, the historical figure always had nothing whatever to do with the job at hand; for instance, on his first appearance he was undercover as an engineer, but using a name whose original owner was a doctor.)

In The Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean Koontz, one of the villains uses at least two aliases from Kurt Vonnegut novels.

In False Memory by Dean Koontz, the evil psychologist is named Mark Ahriman. Not only is his last name identical to the name of the chief figure of evil in Zoroastrianism, but when he travels, he uses aliases that have two things in common: very ordinary first names, and last names that are the name of the Devil. One example is "Jim Shaitan," Shaitan being one of the names for the Devil in Islam.

In Colin Bateman's Mystery Man the narrator, who runs a crime bookshop, goes by a succession of names of crime writers and fictional detectives - unfortunately the people he's talking to are more genned up on their crime fiction than he expects and there are a few "oh, like the writer?" jokes.

In Catch-22, Yossarian censors letters under the name Washington Irving. This is eventually copied by Major Major, who is delighted by the fact that "Washington Irving" can be flipped around and people will know the difference.

In the Ellery Queen novel The Origin of Evil, there is a character who calls himself Alfred Wallace. Recognising the connotations of the name (Wallace was a naturalist and contemporary of Darwin who independently proposed a theory of natural selection) is what starts Ellery down the path to the solution of the mystery.

In Daniel Pinkwater's Young Adult Novel, the Wild Dada Ducks of Himmler High School, who use their Dada names instead of their real names, include the Honorable Venustiano Carranza (President of Mexico), previously known as Pecos Bill.

The main character of Little Brother originally goes by "w1n5t0n", as in the protagonist of 1984. When the plot starts heating up, he realized it might be a tad too obvious, and gets a new alias.

Sweet Valley High had a spin-off series, Elizabeth, in which Elizabeth runs away to London and becomes a servant in an aristocrat's mansion. She decides to use the alias Elizabeth Bennet, and while people do call her out on it, she ultimately gets away with the ruse.

In The Vampire Chronicles book Tale of the Body Thief Lestat uses aliases that refer to figures from Gothic literature ("Sheridan Blackwood," "Sebastien Melmoth") and from It's a Wonderful Life ("Clarence Oddbody," "Lionel Potter").

A character in "The Dancing Floor" by Cherry Wilder goes by the name "Ben Gunn", after the hermit in Treasure Island. The protagonist spends most of the story trying to figure out why the name seems familiar, at one point looking at metallurgy texts because she's remembered that it's connected to "flint" and "silver".

In-universe example in The Fifth Elephant, when Watch Commander Sir Samuel Vimes questions a dwarf who'd been involved in a recent street brawl who started it, the dwarf responds with the name "Agi Hammerthief" before Vimes releases him. Captain Carrot (who was raised by dwarfs) explains to Vimes that Agi Hammerthief is a figure out of dwarf folk lore, a mischievous trickster spirit.

In Sergey Lukyanenko's Emperors of Illusions, the protagonists Kay and Tommy introduce themselves as David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, respectively, at the Grail spaceport. The official recognizes that something is strange and asks for their ID. Kay tells him that they are members of the Cult of Anonimists who are against being photographed (hence, no ID) and adds that even their names are taken from literary characters, after seeing that the trick didn't work.

In In Plain Sight, psycho J.W. Keeley uses the name Bill Monroe (a famous bluegrass musician) as his Go-to Alias. He even comments to himself that he hopes he doesn't run across someone who is a bluegrass fan.

In Endangered, Evil Matriarch Brenda Cates uses the name of country singer Kitty Wells as an alias. Liv knows that she has heard that name before, but cannot place where.

On one episode of Pushing Daisies, Ned, Emerson and Chuck go undercover in a nunnery to solve the murder of a nun. Emerson uses the alias Father Dowling, lifted from a television show called The Father Dowling Mysteries, and Ned goes by Father Mulcahy, from M*A*S*H. Chuck uses the name "Sister Christian", a song from the band Night Ranger. Subverted a bit when they do end up getting caught.

Mother Superior: Perhaps you'd like to call your associate, M*A*S*H's Father Mulcahy. And Sister Christian is nothing but a heavy petting metal ballad.

One CSI episode featured a serial killer who used the names of slasher villains as aliases.

In "Malice in Wonderland", a marriage celebrant who stages Alice in Wonderland themed weddings uses the alias "Charles Dodgson" (the real name of Alice author Lewis Carroll) to hide the fact that he has a criminal record.

The "title character" (sort of) of Remington Steele, a movie buff, has multiple passports, each bearing the name of a character Humphrey Bogart played in the movies. In a later episode, Laura catches him in a lie because a woman calling him uses the alias of an Ingrid Bergman character.

On Lost, Ben's passport says "Dean Moriarty," a character from On the Road.

And Kate, has gone by the names Annie (staying with Ray Mullen), Monica (to marry Kevin the cop), Joan (to receive mail), Maggie (to rob a bank), and Lucy (bonding with Cassidy). These are all the names of saints.

And John Locke went by Jeremy Bentham (both the names of English philosophers).

Veronica Mars: It plays a similar name game with other notable fictional detectives. Keith Mars has memorably introduced himself as "Adrian Monk" and as "Carson Drew, and my daughter Nancy". Veronica, infiltrating a rival school, went by the name Betty, saying she was Horny, the mascot for the Rhinos, the team at her old school...Riverdale. On one occasion, Veronica went to a church group and pretended to be pregnant. Her chosen alias was Hester.

In one episode of Monk, "Mr. Monk on Wheels", Monk uses the name Encyclopedia Brown while knocking on a thief's door.

Farscape used Butch and Sundance as aliases when Crichton and Aeryn were masquerading as bounty hunters.

And the reverse: He referred to himself as "Fred Scarran" during an Earth episode.

The aliases used in Leverage generally have some connection to the heist they're pulling. Word of God states that this is because Hardison picks them.

And at least once they were names of characters or actors from Doctor Who.

The Middleman did this in every single episode, not just with the heroes' aliases; in any given episode, virtually every proper name, real or alias, was part of a pop-culture-allusion theme of the week.

On Heroes, Christopher Eccleston's character, who can turn invisible, introduces himself as Claude Rains, after the actor who played The Invisible Man. The line was actually improvised by Eccleston, but they decided to Throw It In, and eventually, it was decided that this might even be the character's real name.

On one episode of Jeeves and Wooster, Bertie, Sir Roderick Glossop, J. Washburn Stoker, and the entire Drones club are all arrested, and all give false names, mostly derived from Communist leaders, although there is one exception...

Oofy Prosser: I say! Judge: Quiet, Dr. Crippen!

In the Law & Order episode "Charm City," a fugitive signs into a hotel under R. Reagan. When he is eventually arrested, Lennie Briscoe says, "You're not going anyplace, Mr. President!"

In Season 6's "Arcadia", Mulder and Scully's aliases while undercover as a married couple are Rob and Laura Petrie. Given the age of their neighbors, it's surprising no one made the allusion to The Dick Van Dyke Show. It is used for laughs here, as the two spend parts of the episode correcting the pronunciation of "Petrie". It's pronounced like the dish, thank you very much.

Scully: Mulder, if we ever go undercover again, I get to choose the names.

Early in season 2, Mulder uses the alias "George Hale" to board a flight to Cuba. While not a famous person, he had talked about George Hale with Scully earlier in the episode, and was the only way she was able to track him.

In the Corner Gas episode "World's Biggest Thing," Brent adds the names Peter Parker, Marge Simpson and Jean-Luc Picard to a list of people who have bounced checks at the gas station. Oscar doesn't recognize the names, gets very angry about the bounced checks, and tells Brent, "Don't take checks from Marge Simpson or that French guy!" Brent finds this hilarious and a few minutes later he tells Lacey that Oscar is still trying to track down Arthur Fonzarelli.

Modified slightly in the Hustle episode "Conned Out of Luck" - Mickey mentions Ash to The Mark as "Mr. Bond", after which Ash simply can't resist introducing himself as "Bond... James Bond. *beat* No relation."

In another episode, which turns out to be about heroin smuggling, the man who made the pickups for the drugs at a pizza parlor, no less used the names of characters from noir films.

Played with slightly in another episode, in which Castle puts a tracking app on his phone to track Alexis' movements through GPS. When he calls her out on not being where she said she'd be, she asks how he knew. He said a friend saw her, and he said that friend was J. J. Adams, who happened to be Leslie Nielson's character on Forbidden Planet (which Alexis realized almost immediately). Castle got a pretty piercing "The Reason You Suck" Speech for that.

Sam on Burn Notice usually uses "Charles 'Chuck' Finley" as his alias, but in the second episode he and Fiona introduced themselves to a pair of con artists as Detectives Cagney & Lacey. This alludes to the fact that Sharon Gless (Cagney) plays Michael's mother.

New Tricks: In "A Death in the Family", a witness gives the fake name of 'George Boole'. Brian recognises this as the name of a famous mathematician (the inventor of Boolean logic) and reasons that only another mathematician would have picked that name as a spur-of-the-moment alias.

Cold Case: In "One Small Step", a witness who hands in a piece of evidence related to a murder that took place on the day of the first moon landing uses the alias 'Michael Collins'; the name of the third astronaut on the Apollo 11 mission.

Elementary: In "Terra Pericolosa", a thief who specialises in stealing maps uses the alias René Duchez. Duchez was a member of the French resistance who stole plans that showed the defences of Hitler's Atlantic Wall.

In the first episode of iZombie, a body in the morgue had been operating as a prostitute under the alias "Stefani Germanotta". Det. Babineaux starts running background on the victim using this name, unaware it is the real name of Lady Gaga. Needless to say, he catches some ribbing from his fellow detectives.

In an episode of NCIS, the name George Kaplan came up during an investigation, but the team discovered that the account under that name was faked. Tony inevitably remembered that "George Kaplan" was the name of the non-existent federal agent from the movie North By Northwest.

Inspector George Gently: The Victim of the Week in "Gently Among Friends" uses the aliases 'T. Dan Smith' and 'Richard Grainger': two prominent figures in the history of Newcastle who both had the nickname 'Mr Newcastle'.

In the Cabin Pressure episode "Cremona", there's a Shout-Out to Notting Hill (see Film above) where Hester Macauley explains that she uses the names of cartoon characters as aliases while checking into hotels and asks Martin which name she should give this time. Flustered, Martin suggests Jessica Rabbit.

Tower of God: Baam calls himself Jyu Viole Grace and Rachel is suddenly Michelle Light. It is implied that Ja Wagnan's name is also jut an alias. Finally there is Wave Controller instructor Yuga, who's real name and identity is the secret service agent Ren.

In one episode the mafia mistakes Homer for Krusty the Clown (since in this episode he's dressed as Krusty after attending clown school). Homer denies it, but when it turns out the mafia doesn't like Homer either he starts making up several identities, all of which the mafia still would kill him for.

Homer: But wait! You can't kill me for being Krusty. I'm not him. I'm Homer Simpson! Fat Tony: The same Homer Simpson who crashed his car through the wall of our club? Homer: Uh, actually, my name is Barney, Yeah. Barney Gumble. Legs: The same Barney Gumble who keeps taking pictures of my sister? Homer: Uh, actually, my real name is, uh — think, Krusty, think. — Joe Valachi! Louie: The same Joe Valachi who squealed to the Senate Committee about organized crime? Homer: Benedict Arnold! Legs: The same Benedict Arnold who plotted to surrender West Point to the hated British? Homer: D'oh!

On Gargoyles, immortal Anti-Villain MacBeth uses the alias Lennox MacDuff as his modern persona. Both are characters from Shakespeare'sMacbeth. The first time he uses it, the person he's talking to (a writer) immediately finds him suspicious.

Ben 10: In "The Unnaturals", the robot Little League team all have the names of famous dead MLB players.

Real Life

A common tactic of 419 baiters. They usually do this for these reasons:

It's more amusing if they manage to fool the scammer.

The scammer may use it as a false name later, making his future scams more obvious.

As shown in the documentary film Kanehsetake: 270 Years of Resistance, one of the protesters at the Oka Crisis used the alias "Freddy Krueger". Naming yourself after a child-killer is probably not the best way to get the public on your side...

The 2010 Orwell Prize for best political blog was ironically awarded to an anonymous blogger calling himself Winston Smith.

The electronic musician Moby is a big fan of The Simpsons, and checks into hotels with names from the show.

In June 2014, Scott Fistler, an Arizona candidate for the US House of Representatives, legally changed his name to Cesar Chavez believing it would help him appeal to Latino voters. Needless to say, the real Chavez's family was unamused.

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